$10

Editing by Award-Winning Writers

Here’s the scenario: you want help with your law school applications. You know that you’ll present yourself to an admissions committee via essays, and that all the heavy lifting after the LSAT involves writing, but you want a consultant who can draw on a deep well of experience. Should you hire someone with an admissions or a writing background?

Answer: why choose?

At 7Sage, you get the best of both worlds. Our consultants have won national awards for their magazine writing and fiction, sold works of literature to major New York publishers, and taught writing at colleges all over the country. Members of our team have also worked in admissions, gotten into the country’s top law schools, and used statistical models to test and quantify the conventional wisdom of the application cycle. Sign up with us for editing from actual editors and advice from admissions experts.

Our most popular package, Comprehensive Consulting, entails one-on-one guidance for every stage of the admissions process. We’ll help you put together the best possible application with the least possible stress. In the past, our consulting clients have gotten into every T-14 school, won full rides to T-5 schools, and received personalized notes from deans praising their essays. We can’t promise to get you into your dream school, but we can promise to make your application stronger.

Your Voice. Our Expertise.

Take a look at these unsolicited responses to 7Sage Admissions editing:

I am officially committed to [a T2 school]! I could say this is a dream come true, but honestly I never even dreamed that I would be able to go here. You were such an enormous help in making that happen, and I can't thank you enough.

I also wanted to thank you for making me a better writer. Going through the revision process with you offered me a more thorough look at producing great work than probably any other writing exercise I've ever done. You're truly incredible at what you do!”

Courtney

I just want to say thank you again for everything. This process has gone better than I could have hoped for, and I am absolutely over the moon about attending Harvard Law. Thank you so much for not only helping me with my apps but being a constant sounding board and source of good advice. I am so appreciative and happy to have worked with / gotten to know you.

Mark

After working with you as well as another popular law admit company who I won’t name, there’s no comparison. 7Sage Admissions is the best available.

Eden

You truly brought out the best writer in me, and your guidance helped me get into a school that was a far-fetched dream. For that, I'm eternally grateful.

Yara

I will be tapping you again for your services in the next year or two. I don’t think I can trust anyone else.

William

This is excellent and far exceeds my expectations. Thank you for your patience and fidelity…Also, on a personal note, I have thoroughly enjoyed this process.

Bryan

You helped me make the best application possible. Thank you.

George

Thank you for your editorial letters!!! They were eye-opening. Although I thought my essay was finished, I felt as though something was missing, and you pointed out exactly what it was.

Joshua

Thanks so much for your help. You are awesome. I am definitely going to endorse and recommend you to my friends.

Check out a sample edit!

Before

Three, Two, One, Gong! However, I almost did not hear any applause at the trade opening ceremony. It was all because of the huge 18.38 green figure, a 25% drop of XMan’s offering price, shown at the screen of the Bolsa de Montevideo, Uruguay’s stock exchange. As drafting counsel of the company, I have never imagined it would have such a deep down opening price followed by another 40% drop. That day was May 9th, 2015, another crash came into the casino-like Uruguayan stock markets.

The crash reminded me of my own investing experience five years ago, in a cold October, my first stock plunged likely from USD31 to USD23 in three trading days, which made all my former profits suddenly gone away and I was instantaneously suffering from huge loss.

Now I understand it’s mainly the markets lacking a buffering system, but then I naively thought my loss was all because I did not have a good investment portfolio, cannot figure out the technical sign before a crash and ignored the fact that no stock could go one-way growth. From then on, I decided to analyze the K curves, check on famous investors’ opinions and collected predictions from financial media every day. In the following months, I did short term trades and altered my holdings frequently – I did make some correct decision, which made me feel I was a genius, but for most of the other times, I was terribly wrong. Two months past and it turned out my effort did not work out – I was actually losing more. Tired, vexed and depressed, upon the coming Christmas, I cleared all my holdings to prevent further losses.

But I knew I was not a guy resigned to lose. After Christmas I started to read investment books. I read Buffett, Peter Lynch as well as Graham, hoping to find a universal truth in investments from their works. Many of their theories and techniques are very impressive, but it is the book The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham that gave me the core inspiration, and the most inspiring word to me was probability.

The word dawned on me – there is no perfect operation on stock market – no one can always buy at the low and sell at the high. Investment was all about the likelihood. The motive of go perfect is out of my greed and fear. I suddenly understood investment was not only dealing with the market but also myself. I have to control my emotions to think rationally and make timely response. In the long run, I can gain profits from the circumstances that I am probably sure about where the market is going. For other times, run, wait and most importantly, use the time to learn something new. Learning more can help me to upgrade my strategies and grasp next opportunity, which will ultimately benefit me in deciphering the market.

The Intelligent Investor taught me to grow out of my comfort zone, keep learning new knowledge and wait for the opportunity to strike, which mirrors my wish to apply for a prestigious US law school. Today, I want to go out of Uruguay to learn from the world’s most developed market system, I wish to learn how the US designed and improved its rules and I dream of helping my country in its way towards a more stable and mature market. I hope ___ will give me the opportunity.

After a 7Sage Edit

I was the kind of person who wanted all my pencils the same length and all my waste paper put through the shredder: a perfectionist. A newly hired paralegal at Baker Mckenzie, I was also a novice in financial markets. By buying at cyclical lows and selling at cyclical highs, I expected perfect results. My first quarter only exacerbated my naivety: I managed an eighteen percent gain, which I attributed wholly to my skill.

Then the market tanked. In October of 2011, in a span of just three days, my portfolio lost twenty-five percent of its value. The bitter loss left me sleepless and without appetite. I staggered around in a haze, purple bags under my eyes. It was hard not to take it personally.

I decided to reeducate myself. I read Buffett, Peter Lynch, and many other big names, hoping to find a universal answer, a foolproof trading strategy. Towers of books rose up on my floor, and still I couldn’t find what I was looking for.

Eventually, I came across The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, where I read a simple truth that changed my life: stock trading is a game of probabilities. There is no perfect method.

I realized that I couldn’t control the stock market, but I could control my own expectations. To be a competent investor, I had to regulate my emotions and bet on the percentages instead of chasing huge gains. The optimal strategy was to let go of my perfectionism.

I started investing not only in the market but in myself. I continued to read extensively, do internships, and take classes related to the market. Above all, I practiced being calm. I tried to take every gain and loss in stride.

But even as I became more comfortable with risk, I became more aware of how volatile the Uruguayan markets were. Outdated regulations meant that the markets lacked a modern buffering system. Working on a technology company’s $500 million merger in my capacity as Baker Mckenzie’s paralegal showed me how the American securities system values fiduciary duty and shareholders’ rights. Although America’s system is far from perfect, it could teach the Uruguayans a lot.

I, for one, am ready to learn more. At Universidad Católica del Uruguay, I studied Uruguayan financial regulation and economics, but I’ll need to study in the US before I can fully understand American financial regulations. My career goal is to become a leader of Uruguay’s central bank. I plan to use what I learn in America to make my country’s markets more stable and fair. I know it won’t be easy, but my investing experience has taught me to temper big dreams with modest expectations. I don’t have to make the Uruguayan system perfect. I just have to make it better.

About 7Sage Editors

David Busis

Partner

David is a graduate of Yale, where he received a prize for excellence in the English major, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received a teaching fellowship.

His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic online. His fiction has won two national contests, received notable mention in The Best American Short Stories 2014, and been anthologized by Autumn House Press. He taught English and writing at Phillips Academy Andover, the University of Iowa, and Southern New Hampshire University.

He was admitted to Harvard and Yale Law School before he joined 7Sage.

Selene Steelman

Consultant

Selene holds a B.A. with Distinction in English from Swarthmore College and a Juris Doctor from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law where she was Senior Managing Editor of the Cardozo Women’s Law Journal.

For the last 14 years, she evaluated LL.M. and J.D. applications as a member of the Admissions Committee for Cardozo School of Law. As Director of LL.M. Admissions, she admitted and welcomed 27 new classes of LL.M. students from over 25 countries. Prior to joining Cardozo, she was a structured finance associate at a top-tier Manhattan law firm. Before she decided to pursue a legal education, she worked at a New York City literary agency, editing book proposals, negotiating subsidiary rights in the pre-digital era, and searching for the Great American Novel in the slush pile.

She resides in northern New Jersey. When she is not helping law school candidates achieve their dreams, she spends her time playing the violin and ballroom dancing.

Boris Fishman

Editor

Boris Fishman holds a BA in Slavic Literatures and Languages from Princeton University (summa cum laude) and an MFA in fiction from New York University. He is the author of the novels A Replacement Life, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the American Library Association’s Sophie Brody Medal, and Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo, which was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, Travel & Leisure, the London Review of Books, New York Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and other publications. In an earlier life, he was on the editorial staff of The New Yorker; co-edited the U. S. Senate Report on Hurricane Katrina -- where he engaged with prose by lawyers for the first time -- and was the recipient of residencies and fellowships from the New York Foundation of the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, among others. HarperCollins will publish his next book, Savage Feast, a family memoir told through recipes, in 2019. He teaches in Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and lives in New York City. Please see www.borisfishman.com for more information.

Christie Belknap

Consultant

Christie holds a BA in history from the University of Pennsylvania and a JD from Emory Law School, where she served as an editor on the Emory Law Review. She worked at two top-tier law firms in New York City, but after getting her fill of late nights, fancy lunches, and (perhaps most importantly) paying off her student loans, she shifted gears and landed a job in the admissions office at Cardozo Law School. There, she reviewed applications, met and counseled prospective students, spoke on admissions panels, and travelled to such exotic locales as Pittsburgh and Columbus. She returned to practicing law as the real estate counsel for the New York City Economic Development Corporation, where she helped move the Fulton Fish Market from South Street Seaport to a refrigerated, state of the art facility, and got to use the term “fishmonger” on a regular basis. In her latest role as an admissions consultant at 7Sage, she’s happy to draw upon her past experiences as an admissions officer and lawyer to help advise prospective students in the law school application process.

Kurt Pitzer

Consultant

Author and journalist Kurt Pitzer has written about many of the world’s most turbulent regions, including the Balkans, the Middle East, Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a recipient of the Lange-Taylor Prize for his documentary work in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo. His work has appeared in the Boston Globe, The Sunday Times of London, the Los Angeles Times, BBC Radio, People magazine, Pleiades, the Denver Quarterly and Mother Jones, among others.

In 2003, he helped the former head of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear centrifuge program, Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, escape from Iraq to the United States with his family. Their co-written book, The Bomb in My Garden (John Wiley & Sons), was called “never less than riveting” by The New York Times Book Review. Pitzer’s next, Eating with the Enemy (St. Martin’s Press), a “boisterous, improbable book” (The New York Times), is about the unlikely friendship between mobbed-up New Jersey restaurant owner Robert Egan and a North Korean ambassador. He is the producer of the narrative feature film Runoff, which premiered at the Los Angeles, Hamptons International and Woodstock film festivals in 2014.

Pitzer earned his BA in English at Wesleyan University and an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. He teaches Advanced Creative Nonfiction at Harvard’s Extension School.

Aaron Thier

Consultant

Aaron received a BA in Literature from Yale University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Florida, where he taught both creative and expository writing. He is the author of three novels: The Ghost Apple (a semi-finalist for the Thurber Prize), Mr. Eternity (a finalist for the same award), and The World is a Narrow Bridge. His essays and criticism have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Los Angeles Review of Books,Lucky Peach, and other magazines, and in 2016 he received a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment from the Arts.

Sam Massie

Data Specialist

Sam is a graduate student in statistics at Yale University and holds a BA in economics, also from Yale, together with a certificate from the MIT Advanced Study Program. Prior to joining 7Sage, he worked for six years as a business analyst and product manager in Hong Kong, Boston, and Shanghai. He speaks fluent Mandarin, and his writing about China has appeared in the New York Times. Currently, he is based in Boston, where he also consults for companies on data analytics projects.

Mark Firmani

Consultant

Mark is a doctoral candidate in the University of Pennsylvania English Department and a J.D. student (deferred admission until 2019) at Yale Law School. After graduating as valedictorian from Quinnipiac University with BAs (double summa cum laude) in English and History, he spent a year hiking in his home state of New Hampshire before living as a Fulbright scholar in Amman, Jordan, where he taught as the 7th- and 9th-grade English teacher at a UNRWA school for Palestinian boys.

While living in Jordan, he decided to take the LSAT and, two years into his doctoral studies, he applied to law schools, receiving acceptances everywhere he applied: Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia (Hamilton scholarship), NYU (Vanderbilt scholarship), Penn (Levy and Toll Public Interest scholarships), and Duke (Mordecai scholarship).

He currently lives in Philadelphia, PA, where he spends his time reading Arabic-language novels and writing his dissertation. He also teaches Penn undergraduate courses in topics as varied as monstrosity, law and literature, and artificial intelligence, and looks forward to adopting a dog very soon.

Amy Bonnaffons

Consultant

Amy holds a BA in literature (magna cum laude) from Yale University and an MFA in fiction writing from New York University, where she won the Goldwater Teaching Fellowship and an Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award. She taught in the Expository Writing Program at New York University for four years before deciding to pursue a Ph.D. in English at the University of Georgia. Her story collection THE WRONG HEAVEN will be published in 2018 by Lee Boudreaux Books at Little, Brown, followed by THE REGRETS, a novel about the afterlife. Her writing has appeared in publications ranging from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to Kenyon Review and The Sun, and has won awards and fellowships from Yale University, Open City magazine, and The MacDowell Colony, among others.

Amy is a founding editor of 7x7, a literary journal promoting collaboration between writers and visual artists, and has served as international editor of Washington Square Review. She has also helped many students hone their personal statements to gain admission to college, law school and business school.

Ben Mauk

Consultant

Ben Mauk is a freelance writer based in Berlin. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine,Harper's Magazine, The Guardian, Granta, London Review of Books, Virginia Quarterly Review, Vice Magazine, The New Yorker online, and many other publications. He has received a Fulbright research fellowship and multiple grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He earned a B.A. in English literature, philosophy, and cognitive studies from Cornell University (Phi Beta Kappa, distinction in all subjects) and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He taught literature and creative writing for several years at the University of Iowa. He is the co-founder and director of the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.

Sarika Mathur

Consultant

Sarika holds a BA in Philosophy from Fordham University and a JD from Emory Law School, where she won first place at the National Transactional LawMeet. She also holds a MPH with a focus on Health Management from Harvard University.

Sarika has worked for Emory Law’s admissions office and as a private equity and finance associate at a mid-size law firm. In 2016, she co-founded a medical device startup, which won first place at the Georgia Tech Startup Competition. Her prior work experiences include researching food and hunger issues at a think tank, which monitors UN policymaking, and conducting field work in Tanzania.

Sarika has a keen interest in social entrepreneurship and innovation, particularly in developing countries.

Brian Booker

Consultant

Brian received a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from NYU, and an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was an Iowa Arts Fellow and, in his third year, a Schulze Fellow. He has been the Grace Paley Fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.

Brian’s fiction has been published in Conjunctions, One Story, New England Review, Tin House, Vice, and other magazines; his stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the National Magazine Award. His debut short story collection, Are You Here For What I’m Here For?, was published in 2016 by Bellevue Literary Press.

Brian has ten years of experience teaching expository writing and literature courses at NYU; he has also taught creative writing workshops at the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Most recently, he has been a Lecturer in the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Chicago, designing and teaching workshops for both undergraduate and graduate students on topics such as Literary Horror.

Maura Roosevelt

Consultant

Maura holds an AB from Harvard College, where she studied English and American Literature, as well as Visual and Environmental Studies. After Harvard, Maura attended the MFA program in fiction writing at New York University, where she was a recipient of the Starworks Teaching Fellowship.

As both a fiction writer and essayist, her work has appeared in The Nation, Joyland, and Vol.1 Brooklyn, among other places. Her novel BABY OF THE FAMILY will be published by Penguin Random House in March of 2019.

Maura has taught creative and critical writing at NYU, the University of Southern California, and the Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles. She was a lecturer in the Expository Writing Department at NYU for four years, winning an Award for Teaching Excellence every year. She currently splits her time between Los Angeles and New York, and is set to begin a doctoral program at Columbia University in 2018.

Sarah Cohen

Consultant

Sarah holds a BA in English and Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis (Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude), where she was selected as a member of Mortar Board Senior Honor Society and was awarded the Washington University Prize for Undergraduate Fiction. She received an MFA in fiction writing from New York University, where she was awarded the Starworks Fellowship, and instructed undergraduates in the craft of fiction and poetry. She has worked for over four years at a top Manhattan literary agency, editing manuscripts and proposals for award-winning authors, including Russell Shorto, Tara Brach, and Maryanne Wolf. She teaches English and writing enrichment to high school students, and edits manuscripts freelance. She is currently writing a fantasy series for young adults.

Rachel Yoder

Consultant

Rachel Yoder holds a BA in English literature from Georgetown University and an MFA in fiction from the University of Arizona, where she was awarded the Foundation Award in Fiction. She taught creative writing, composition, and rhetoric at Prescott College in northern Arizona before earning a second MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Iowa, where she was awarded an Iowa Arts Fellowship.

Her writing has won The Missouri Review Editors' Prize in Fiction and has been a finalist for the Nelson Algren Award from The Chicago Tribune. Her stories and essays have also appeared in The New York Times, The Paris ReviewOnline, and The Sun Magazine, and have been anthologized in Best of the Web as well as in multiple books focused on experimental writing.

Rachel is a founding editor of draft: the journal of process, which publishes first and final drafts of stories and essays along with author interviews about the creative process.

Margaret Reges

Consultant

Margaret Reges is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her honors include a 2015 “Discovery”/ Boston Review prize from the 92nd Street Y, the 2012 Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets from Michigan Quarterly Review, and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, the MacDowell Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her poems have appeared in The Boston Review, The Iowa Review, jubilat, B O D Y, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Orleans Review, and elsewhere.

Before making the long drive back to California in early 2017, Margaret was an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa, where she taught undergraduate writing courses. Nowadays, when she isn't toiling away as a freelance editor/writer, she travels to India, South America, or Thailand to teach creative writing courses for Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies. She is currently based in Oakland, CA.

Daniel Castro

Consultant

Daniel has worked as a writing consultant for over a decade. He holds a BA in English from Indiana University-Bloomington, where he worked as a tutor at the campus writing center, and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he received a Dean's Graduate Fellowship and taught undergraduate writing. He is a former Fulbright scholar in Spain, and his work has appeared in Tampa Review, Miami Herald, Gambit Weekly, and Salon. He was awarded the Cintas Fellowship in Literature in 2014 and the Faulkner Society's novel prize in 2015. He was a resident at the MacDowell Colony in 2016. He teaches classes and does manuscript consulting for Sackett Street Writers' Workshop in Brooklyn, and is a co-founder of the Berlin Writers' Workshop.

Kristen Gleason

Consultant

Kristen holds a BA in English with Honors from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a Regents’ and Chancellor’s scholar, and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the University of Montana. She studied linguistics in Tromsø, Norway on a High North Fellowship. She is currently a doctoral student in English at the University of Georgia.

Her fiction has appeared in Boston Review, Fence, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She was selected as an A Public Space Emerging Writers Fellow and was the winner of BOMB's Biannual Fiction Contest and the North American White Review Short Story Prize in 2017. Recently, she was awarded a Fulbright grant to Norway for the 2018-2019 academic year.

She has taught creative writing and composition at the University of Montana, Montana Tech, and the University of Georgia, where she received an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. She was the managing editor of the University of Montana’s literary journal, CutBank. She has also worked in the Oakland, California public school system, edited for an academic publisher, instructed students in GRE and SAT test prep, and tutored in the University of Georgia’s Writing Center.

Conor Ahern

Consultant

Conor works as a civil rights attorney for the City of New York, and has been moonlighting as an LSAT tutor for two years. Immediately following law school, he worked as a Ford Fellow at the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project. He enjoys reading fiction and making bad puns. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia and of Harvard Law School.

$10

Copyright 2019 - 7Sage. By using this website, you agree to be bound by the Terms of Service.
7Sage Education Consulting Inc. (“7Sage”) provides information and guidance about law school admissions (“Materials”). 7Sage does not make any warranty of any kind (expressed or implied) as to the results that may be obtained from use of its Materials. In particular, 7Sage does not guarantee that the Materials will improve your chances of admission to law school, or that you will be admitted to any law school. 7Sage is not responsible for any loss, injury, claim, liability, or damage (including rejection from any law school) related to your use of the Materials, whether it be from errors, omissions, advice, or any other cause whatsoever. Your use of the Materials is at your own risk.
7SAGE is not operated by, sponsored by, endorsed by, or affiliated with SAGE Publications, Inc. in any way or manner.